On the banks of the Zhujiang River in southern China, a mother Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) exchanges affectionate strokes on the trunk with her offspring. We normally think of elephants as native to India and Southeast Asia rather than China, but they once roamed China as far north as the province of Henan before the 14th century BC, with the Chinese employing them as beasts of war until the 970s AD. Today, a small population of elephants persists in China’s Yunnan province near the border with Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.